


Hold Me

by whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:38:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4941703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas slipped off his trenchcoat, let it fall to the floor. He was made of tiredness.<br/>There was a sadness caught in his throat like a cobweb, and he couldn’t cough it away; and there was a sprain of doubt across his chest that only seemed to twist a little further out of shape with every move he made, every word he said.<br/>__________________________________________________________<br/>Cas know that no one will come and be with him tonight, even though he's never felt so lost in his life. That's when he hears a knock at the door, and hears the voice of the person he most wanted, and least expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Me

Cas slipped off his trenchcoat, let it fall to the floor. He was made of tiredness.

There was a sadness caught in his throat like a cobweb, and he couldn’t cough it away; and there was a sprain of doubt across his chest that only seemed to twist a little further out of shape with every move he made, every word he said.

He felt as though… as though he were standing in a room filled with hourglasses, and everywhere he turned, he tipped one over.  _Smash,_ a friend died.  _Smash,_ another.  _Smash,_ he lost his grace.  _Smash,_ Dean couldn’t even look him in the face, not anymore. Sand on the floor, time he could have spent differently. Sand in his mouth, in his eyes.

He picked up a glass of water from the bedside table of the motel, and took a sip. He tried to see his problems from the outside; tried to see himself as small, finite, and insignificant, his endless screw-ups just one warped strand in a twisted, screwed-up universe.

It didn’t help overly much. He took a shower.

Dressed again, hair dripping dry, he sat down on the bed and ran his hands over the cheap covers. He sighed, and his breath filled the room, the only sound, terribly quiet and very loud, all at once. He felt suddenly as though he were the only being alive for miles. Between the lines of loneliness was a vague sensation of relief.

Dean’s face flashed briefly into his mind, but he pushed it away.  _No one’s coming to help you. No one ever does. Not even him._

Moving back on the bed so that he was resting against the headboard, Cas switched on the television and let the noises of tearful Spanish melodrama fill the space around him. Whenever people cried on television, there was a hand on their shoulder, arms to enfold them. Cas envied them their friends. He envied them their lives, though he knew he shouldn’t.

One person’s prison is another’s escape. Perhaps there were people out there who dreamt of being in his shoes, instead of their own.

He wanted to hunch himself up below the covers, but he knew from experience that it wouldn’t help. He never seemed to be able to fold himself small enough. No matter how close he pressed skin against skin, thighs to chest, arms to shins, cheeks to knees, he always felt wide, too big, an alien shape in a world designed for perfect rounds.

He took off his tie, slowly, drawing it out from around his neck, loosening his physicality.

_Scream,_ went Inez.

_Sigh,_ went Cas.

_Knock knock,_ went the door.

Cas stared at it. He waited for the problem to resolve itself without his help.

_Knock knock._

“It – it’s open,” Cas said, in a voice like a piece of cardboard left out in the rain. The door handle turned, Cas watching with a dull ache behind his eyes, and a whisper – just a breath of hope, but it couldn’t be, it wouldn’tbe,  _he never comes…_

“Cas?”

The voice was soft, hesitant – but it was unmistakeable. Cas watched, too surprised to even arrange his face into surprise, as Dean entered the room, treading carefully over the worn carpet as though it were a Nightingale Floor.

“Cas,” Dean said, closing the door behind him, and twisting the lock into place. Cas watched him do it with a burn in his chest. Dean smiled at him, thinly, uncertain. “Shut the bad guys out,” he said.

Cas opened his mouth to say something, and then let it fall closed again on a sigh that serrated his throat as it passed. His coat and tie were lying on the floor like missing pieces of his jigsaw and he wanted them back; he felt naked without them. Dean looked uncomfortable, too. He hovered around the door for a moment, and then stooped to pick up the trench.

“Not abandoning Old Faithful, are you?” he said, holding it as though it were a relic. Cas shook his head mutely. He needed to speak, but couldn’t seem to get anything out past the lump in his throat. Dean frowned, and approached the bed. He lowered himself onto the mattress next to Cas, careful not to get too close as he propped himself up against the headboard. The angle of their legs intersected halfway across the room. It was a strange kind of intimacy.

“Cas, you sounded pretty – pretty beat up on the phone,” Dean said, the words coming out like an apology. Cas raised one shoulder, and let it fall. “I know that this has been hard for you, and –”

“Why are you here?” Cas said abruptly. Dean blinked, taken aback.

“Well – well,” he said, with a touch of bluster. “You know, I just – I wanted to check that you were OK. This… this life we lead…” he swallowed. “It can really get in your head. I know that as well as anyone, and I thought you were – you were feeling…” a delicate trail of words unspoken, leading off into a broken possibility. The silence was long.

“Dean,” said Cas softly. Dean shifted on the bed, his hands clenching and unclenching uselessly once, twice. “Dean, I think – I think I’m getting too old for this.”

Dean huffed ever so slightly. The stale motel lighting brushed over his face like a dusty cloth.

“Just a few billion years in, and you’re gonna call it quits?” he said. He smiled lopsidedly, and Cas responded in kind. Something about his expression must have been wrong, though, because Dean’s smile cracked and his hand reached out, almost unconsciously, to grab Cas’.

“Hang in there,” he said. “You hear me? Hang in there.”

Cas sighed, and it came out shaky. He tried not to grip Dean’s hand too hard.

“Dean…” he said, but nothing followed. His mouth felt stitched up tight.

“Tell me what you need, Cas,” Dean said. “You wanna go get a burger? Or we could go for a drink? There’s a place –”

“Hold me,” Cas said, so quietly. A confession.

Dean fell deathly still.

“H-hold…?”

Cas shifted on the bed, turning his back to Dean, dangling his legs over the side of the bed, out above the finite abyss above the carpet.

“I’m falling apart,” Cas whispered. “I am falling apart. Nothing is right. Nothing I do ever goes well. I cannot have what I want. I cannot escape my body. I am tired and I am old and I am falling apart and what I want, what I want, is for you to just… just…”

“Hey,” said Dean, moving. Cas squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to watch the narrowing of Dean’s shoulders, the closing of his face, the seven steps he would take to unlock the door and go. “Hey, hey, hey.”

And then there were arms, pulling Cas in.

He collapsed against Dean like a wave of water against a levee, eyes wide as he leaned back against Dean’s chest. He found their cheeks pressing together, Dean’s arms like a lifebelt around Cas’ waist, pulling him right in to shore.

Dean was warm, and strong, and smelled familiar. His breathing was a thrum in Cas’ chest, fast at first, evening out into regular huffs after a moment or two. And oh, oh, the proximity was – was a blessing, it was a second pair of hands under the weight on his breaking back; it was a softening of the ache in his chest, a release. Cas shivered, and relaxed. Dean’s grip was firm, unmoving.

“Is – is this…” Dean said, and Cas could feel skin moving against his own cheek, the words spoken so close that they were almost his own.

“Yes,” Cas said. “Yes.”

Dean held him through the night.

When he woke up, it was to the feeling of arms crossed over his chest, keeping him near. He rolled over, and Dean mumbled in his sleep.

“Thank you,” Cas murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Dean pressed a lazy, sleepy kiss to Cas’ forehead.

“Sleep,” he said, low in his throat, a quiet plea against the morning.

Cas closed his eyes. If Dean wanted to turn day into night, then he would see it done.


End file.
